


So Let Love Grow- INDEFINITE HIATUS

by honeybeat



Category: Half Life VR But The AI Is Self Aware
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Canon-typical language, Gordon is a great dad, M/M, Minor Original Character(s), Slow Burn, They/Themrey, Trans Gordon Freeman, formatting based on mobile viewing, gordon doesn't know how to deal with trauma, my chapters are short and my dick is huge, not a game universe, probably not completely in character but fuck it!, thisll be domestic and cute! but also discuss trauma and stuff, vague descriptions of injuries
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-13
Updated: 2020-06-27
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:53:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,645
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24694822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeybeat/pseuds/honeybeat
Summary: Gordon arrives back at his perfect family home. Now, he has to figure out what home means to him.Or, I cause problems on purpose to cause love and support.
Relationships: Benrey/Gordon Freeman, Gordon Freeman & Joshua Freeman
Comments: 36
Kudos: 177





	1. The Rooster Crows

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon wakes up.

For the first time in what felt like ages, Gordon Freeman woke up and didn’t want to die.

See, he wouldn’t have considered the noise nice a week ago. Before the disaster at Black Mesa, he would’ve groaned and tried to sleep for another hour or so. Eventually he’d get up, drag himself to the kitchen, and pour some coffee before doing his chores and getting ready for work.

Now that he’d woken up at the edge of death more times than he’d like to think about, though, the crowing of a rooster wasn’t too bad.

Gordon yawned and grabbed around the bedside table for his glasses, then his phone. The cell’s clock told him it was 6:19, and a quick glance at the barely lit sky outside seemed to confirm that. Miraculously, he felt better rested than he had in years- suddenly being out of hell will do that to you, he figured. 

Actually, when did he go to sleep? All he remembered was being sent home from the weird-ass party at the restaurant* last night. Tommy’s dad (Goodman, he’d called himself, or G-Man for short) had led a nearly comatose Gordon to a van, where he’d found an envelope along with a shiny new phone- with the exact same information on it as the one he’d abandoned in the locker room.

He put down the phone, and found the envelope from last night also on the table. That’s when he realized it: when instead of peeling the paper back, his stub whacked against it uselessly.

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Ok. _Deep breaths, Freeman. This isn’t the worst thing that’s happened to you._ Upon inspection, he felt some fucked up sense of relief. Where back in Black Mesa there had been a bleeding wound, there was now only skin. Gordon wasn’t completely unfamiliar with grafted skin, and this didn’t look like that. It looked much more natural, as if it just grew there. Maybe that was something a medical doctor would know about, but not a goddamn theoretical physicist! 

_Oh well._ Much stranger things, and much, much worse things had happened to him. This was good! Probably. The real problem at hand- Gordon snorted at his own joke- was the envelope. Holding it down with the stub, he peeled it open with his left hand.

_Doctor Freeman,_

_I am sorry we could not discuss your “situation” back at the Chuck. E. Cheese’s entertainment center. While my superiors disapproved of my full restoration of your body, they did allow me to heal your unfortunate accident. Do not worry Doctor Freeman, you will not be forced to remain in this condition for long. As you have been a loyal employee of the Black Mesa company, you will be fairly compensated for a month of vacation, as well as the amount enclosed as a “hazard pay.” You will additionally find a Black Mesa prosthetist in your “contacts app.” She will offer a “company discount.” I suggest you take advantage of that discount, Doctor Freeman._

The letter was unsigned, but Gordon could only think of one highly irritating person that could’ve sent it. G-Man. The check probably had enough Wikipedia money to pay for half a year of expenses. Certainly a step up from his usual salary, but then again, there weren’t a lot of people to pay anymore. 

Another check at the phone revealed that 10 minutes had already passed. Even with a vacation, daily chores couldn’t be set aside. Gordon opened the door to the fenced-in backyard. It hadn’t changed much: the grass the chickens were pecking at was too long, and the plants in the small garden he had built with Josh were overgrown.

**JOSH.**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *opinions expressed by characters may not be compliant with the author's opinions
> 
> Hi wow you made it without clicking off. Thanks for that. Any criticism (other than the already acknowledged "way too short" and "only one character") is appreciated!


	2. The Chicken Clucks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon just wants Joshua to be okay, Josh just wants to check on his chickens.

For the second time in roughly 15 minutes, Gordon Freeman made a terrible realization- one that no man should make. The first realization was his lack of most of his forearm. The second, worse realization completely paralyzed him. He didn’t have any idea where his child was. 

The tiny Coomer in his brain told him to calm down, but not for the first time, he ignored it. Gordon tried to recount the morning before the Resonance Cascade, but the earliest he could remember of that day was walking into Black Mesa. Fine, fine, memory loss was _fine_ , he could figure it out. He pulled the weird new phone out of his pocket- how he got into sweatpants was yet another mystery he could wait to investigate. With some difficulty (he wasn’t exactly ambidextrous), he opened up his calendar app.

MARCH 9

Josh @ daycare 7 am - 3 pm

Josh @ Sam’s 3 pm - 7 pm

Workday All Week

Oh, duh. That was some comfort, though Sam won’t be happy. He navigated to the contacts and called them. They picked up on the second ring- probably a record for them.

A groggy voice answered the call. “Hello, who is this?” Oh right, it was way too early for phone calls.

“Hey Sam, I-” Gordon didn’t get far before being cut off.

  
“Gordon, holy shit, is that you?” There’s the good old yelling. “I thought you were fucking dead! What the fuck?”

“I’m so so sorry, I was- there was a, uh.” How does one explain an alien invasion and military massacre? Was he even allowed to talk about that? 

“‘Uh, uh,’” Sam was mocking him now. “Gordo, I do not give a shit right now. Are you good? Where are you?”

“Home, and I- I think I’m fine?” No, he definitely wasn’t, but physically, probably.

A long, drawn out sigh. Bits and pieces of audio came through the phone; Sam and their fiancé were discussing something. 

“Come over and get your damn kid.”

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Apparently the courtesy of the new cell did not extend to Gordon’s car. It must have been a sight, a bruised and cut up man in sneakers and pajamas cradling a sleepy, sniffling toddler on the bus. Altogether, the trek to and from Sam’s apartment lasted an hour and a half. Half of this time was the bus rides and half was trying to explain the physics behind a Resonance Cascade to a semi-conscious Sam and their frantic fiancé, who just wanted to know where the hell Gordon’s hand was.

_Ultimately_ , Gordon decided, _telling them the basics of what happened probably won’t be too bad._ So he did- other than all the weird supernatural shit, and wiping out a large portion of the United States military, and killing a god. What had G-Man called it? A “need to know basis?” It was that, yeah.

Sam and Melissa gave a summary of their side of the week. When Gordon hadn’t come over on time to take Joshua home, they just thought he was holed up at work with a tricky equation. When that stretched past the kid’s bedtime, Mel helped him set up a blanket fort to sleep in while Sam dialed every number they could think of. Gordon didn’t pick up, Black Mesa didn’t seem to have a number anywhere, and the cops weren’t allowed to go near the facility. So the couple took their best care of Josh, and paid Gordon’s elderly neighbor to feed his birds daily.

“Hey Jo-bug,” Gordon sat his child down beside him on the couch (the big one in the living room, not Josh’s smaller one in his playroom). In response, Josh tilted his head. “Dad’s really sorry for being gone so long. Did ya have fun with Sammy and Mel?” After taking a moment to consider, he smacked his legs three times and stuck out his tongue: a definite approval. “It’ll be a bit different for a while, okay?” Gordon held his right arm out for the kid to look over, until he nodded. “I love you, little dude. Wanna go feed the chickeys?” More leg smacks, and he slid off the couch and started walking toward the backdoor.

After opening the door for Josh, his dad went to the kitchen. _Time to figure out what hasn’t expired!_ Gordon crinkled his nose at some leftovers, struggled to dump out a quart of milk, and put a pair of bananas in a compost bucket before Joshua came back inside. “Did you finish feeding everyone?” Josh opened and closed his little hands. “Good job!” Gordon peeked in the freezer. Oh, that’s something! “Hey bud, how do you feel about some biscuits and jam?” Breakfast finally came at a quarter to nine, and both bellies were growling. Frozen biscuits weren’t the best, but to Gordon they tasted like heaven. Any food that wasn’t either soda or shitty pizza would probably be perfection for a while. Everything that wasn’t the worst the world had to offer seemed like perfection.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yes, I'm using 'now' phone technology instead of '2 thousand and something' phone technology. I just want to dude


	3. The Fox Barks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A chicken goes missing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Google says foxes also make a noise called “gekkering,” which is objectively a better word than "bark" but maybe not a better title
> 
> WARNING: This one contains animal death and descriptions of it!

Gordon spent his whole first day home that way. Kept himself busy, asked Josh about his week, and did not think about Black Mesa. Josh, for his part, complied with this. He didn’t know why his dad was so interested in his daycare and time with Sam ‘n Mel, but he liked describing it! Or more accurately drawing it. Cleaning out the attic a month or so ago had resulted in Josh getting a hand on some of his dad’s old comic books. After spending a solid afternoon paging through Calvin and Hobbes, the kid had decided comics were the best. A step up from not having any way to get across his ideas, Gordon supposed, but his son wasn’t exactly an artistic prodigy.

One dreamless and peaceful night later, the scientist decided it was time to work in the garden. He had a good view of Joshie from the beds; he was using some safety scissors to cut up construction paper into vague shapes of animals. Gordon smiled at the sweet sight and got to work harvesting first. He steadied himself with his leg and pulled up his two rows of turnips, setting them in a basket to his side. Whenever one of them was overgrown or too small to be of use, he tossed it to the chickens. Most of the weeds went to the chickens as well.

Gordon and Joshua had raised the chickens together. Four hens and a rooster. Gordon had been offered the first three hens (who he called the ladies) when they were chicks by an acquaintance two years or so ago, and they came with names: Millie had the spots around her feet, Ruby’s beak was slightly red, Lucy was all black. The other two were much more recently acquired, and named by Josh: Kitty was the noisy littlest hen, and Elmo was the rooster.

Snapping out of his chicken reminiscing, Gordon looked up from his plants. Come to think of it, where was Ruby? He stood up, stepped over the smaller fence protecting his years of labor from the hunger of the fowl. Josh noticed his dad’s movement and waved, which he returned with a smile. He walked over to the coop, behind the big tree and its rope swing. Craning his neck, Gordon squinted into the squat building. Nothing seemed to be moving in there; maybe Ruby was still asleep? Gordon made a little clucking noise, that usually drew the ladies to him.

Everything crashed down.

“whatcha makin that stupid noise for?”

Gordon was sure his heart popped out of his chest. This couldn’t be happening- no, this wasn’t happening! This was all a hallucination! Hallucinations were fine. Hallucinations were better than the frankly ridiculous idea that this was real. That fucking Benrey, the one he killed, was really, actually in front of him, with the body of one of his goddamn chickens in his mouth.

The little brain Coomer was telling him to not panic. Gordon grabbed the closest thing to a weapon around him. A shovel in his non-dominant hand was probably better than nothing, right? “Jo-bug, go inside.” He could hear the door to the kitchen close, and he could only hope that little Josh wasn’t watching- or listening, for that matter.

“oh thats a- a cute, uh, nickname. whats his name then?” One would think it would be hard to smirk, much less ramble like an idiot, with a well-fed hen in the way. However, Benrey seemed to be proving that incorrect. “joooo... siah? joey- no thats another nickname. yo you ever seen jojo?”

Gordon steeled himself. Nothing made sense here. Benrey was dead, that was a fact. But if his senses were to be believed, Benrey was also here. (Right here.) (In the chicken coop he had built.) (The chicken coop his son had painted.) So his senses couldn’t be believed, that was the only conclusion. Hallucinations across multiple senses weren’t especially common, but common went out the window with Black Mesa.

Even though the Benrey in front of him wasn’t real, it was better safe than sorry, right? So Gordon decided to interrupt the (former?) guard’s mumbling about Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure. “What are you doing here?”

Benrey removed Ruby from their mouth, their bloody, sharp teeth reflecting the little bit of afternoon light that came into the coop. “i have to eat, bro. circle of life. mufasa. you didnt let me have any of the uhh… lasaga you had last night.”

“The lasagna?”

“yeah the lagaga.”

“It’s la- you watched us eat?” Gordon brandished the shovel and crept toward the coop. “Look, ‘bro.’ You aren’t real, I need to get you out of my mind or whatever. Trauma stuff.” For half a second, Benrey’s face almost seemed to betray some sort of emotion. Almost. “So get the fuck out of here!”

Still holding the chicken, Benrey phased through the roof of the coop. “youre no fun, man. you used to be fun.” Their voice carried the same faux-hurt that it had in the ‘final battle’ black in Back Mesa. Looking away and groaning, Gordon set the shovel down. He really hoped Josh didn’t see him talking to nothing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Can you tell I enjoy the little details? I enjoy little details way too much


	4. The Snake Hisses

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon has a dream.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> TW during the script-style part for “sacrificial” killing. Summary in the end notes.

The nightmares only began on his second night after coming home, the night after he saw- no, _imagined_ Benrey. That seemed to trigger everything; after he came inside and found Joshie crying, the memories flooded back in (How long did he think he could repress those, anyway?). 

Back in MIT, Gordon was forced to take a philosophy class. Being a physics major, he didn’t think it was especially important to him. An entire semester of learning someone else’s morals, and at 9 am? He probably napped more than he learned in that class. (Turned out that not having strong morals came back to be helpful. Who would’ve thought?) He’d particularly hated the trolley problem. What kind of dumbass would protect one person over several?

Of course, his subconscious knew all of that. And, of course, his subconscious caused issues.

Scene 1

Xen.

_GORDON, a pathetic mess graying far too early for his age, stands atop a floating island, once again clad in a Hazardous Environment Suit and armed with a both a rifle and his arm. To his right is another floating island holding BUBBY, COOMER, and TOMMY. To his left is BENREY floating above the endless void. THE SCIENCE TEAM faces GORDON. BENREY does not._

COOMER

_inexplicably grinning_

Hello, Gordon! We seem to be in quite the perilous situation, don’t we?

GORDON

Dr. Coomer, what- what’s happening? 

BUBBY

We’re back here, what does it look like? You must’ve fucked up again.

_GORDON facepalms._

GORDON

How are you pegging this on me?

_THE SCIENCE TEAM recoils a bit at that. GORDON continues without noticing._

GORDON

I mean, even with fucking Benrey right there, you peg this on me!

BUBBY

That’s disgusting.

COOMER

None of us want to peg you, Gordon!

_GORDON, COOMER, and BUBBY all begin yelling at each other across the void. TOMMY clears his throat. The others are somewhat stunned into silence at the man standing up for himself._

TOMMY

Mister Freeman, have you heard of the trolley problem?

GORDON

Oh, goddamnit.

COOMER

The trolley problem is a thought experiment in ethics modeling an ethical dilemma. It is generally considered to represent a classic cla

_TOMMY once again demonstrates his ability to speak for himself by interrupting the inevitable Wikipedia recitation._

TOMMY

It’s the one where you have to choose whether to sacrifice one person for the sake of five other people! And since you have the gun, I guess you gotta do the sacrificing!

GORDON

Really now, a choice between the people I survived with and Benrey? Moral dilemma my ass.

_GORDON steadies his gun. He aims at the back of the guard’s helmet. He pulls the trigger._

BENREY

rude.

_End._

Gordon jolted awake. That wasn’t the worst outcome for that dream, at least. It was fucked up, definitely- he didn’t want to think about Xen ever again, for one thing, or moral philosophy for that matter- but at least dream-Gordon hadn’t been forced to sacrifice someone he gave a shit about. Using his left arm (dream-Gordon got to relive killing Benrey _and_ got to do it with two hands? That bastard was downright lucky!), he put his glasses on and looked blearily at his phone screen. Yeah, sure, it was late enough to get started on his day. 

What to do, what to do… Ms Sanchez next door may have been financially compensated for feeding the chickens already, but Gordon felt like she deserved more. Speaking of the chickens, he supposed he had to clean up the mess in the coop. The mess that was caused by a raccoon or hawk (there were hawks in Nevada, right?) or something. Something explainable, something that wasn’t a hallucination of a dead demigod. Oh, and he could schedule that appointment with the Black Mesa prosthetics person that G-Man had mentioned! A good day plan, indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Summary of the script section:  
> In the dream, Gordon is back in Xen. The science team is one one side of him and Benrey is on the other. The author makes a pegging joke. Tommy demonstrates that he can express himself. Gordon is faced with the classic "trolley problem" mentioned in the intro, and kills Benrey.
> 
> Now for some of my usual funnies:  
> Did you know MIT offers a minor in “Polymers and Soft Materials?” Because I do now, apparently  
> I made the executive decision to keep the “philosophy class” vague, because I couldn’t pick one that would have the problem I needed. Theres a super cool looking class called “Philosophy of Quantum Mechanics” though. Thats fun


	5. The Frog Croaks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon and Josh do chores.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one’s multiple pages, who’da thunk. Light tw for a mention of animal mutilation, in the middle of the fourth paragraph.

Gordon was so ready for his day to go well. He had it almost fully planned, just like he used to, just like he did before everything went wrong. To his credit, he went through most of the day normally!

5 am. Waking up before Elmo (as in the rooster; the show came on at 9) was hard, but he’d need to do so if he wanted to get up before Josh. And that was definitely what he wanted. Obviously he cleaned out the coop sometimes, but it was usually a joint task. Josh was great with stuff like that, weird little kid loved doing chores with his dad. He’d be suspicious if he knew something was going on without him, if not downright sad.

Sneaking through the hall was hard, Josh always had excellent hearing. But Gordon was a dad, he managed. The kitchen was down the hall. Apart from the backyard, that kitchen was his favorite part of the house. So many memories brought him here, so many mini-dinner parties and so much laughter at burnt food. Also, less reverently, that was where the coffee was made. 

After pausing for a moment to flick the switch on the coffee machine, he opened the glass doors. Ooh, it was kind of chilly today, he might need to wear a jacket. Thinking about clothing choices was a nice distraction until Gordon made his way to the chicken coop. The birds inside were still asleep. That was fine, as long as he didn’t wake them up they wouldn’t be in the way. All of the blood- of Ruby’s blood- was on the floor. It was dried by now, but should come out with some ammonia. He went back inside and grabbed it. The coffee was almost ready; should be done before he came back inside, and hopefully before Josh woke up. Gordon tucked the ammonia spray under his right arm, and grabbed a roll of paper towels.

Cleaning took longer than he thought it would, the whole “not having an arm” thing was taking more of a toll than it had been. Right, he made a note last night to call the prosthetist. He was about to open up his contacts, but realized,  _ oh yeah, most people aren’t up this early _ . Time to figure out how to repay Ms. Sanchez, then.

_ Hmm. _ Perhaps he’d bake something. Cookbooks were on the third shelf of the bookshelf in the living room. He reorganized the shelves every once in a while. Sometimes by color, sometimes by alphabetical order of the authors, sometimes alphabetically by title. They were always organized by subject (with Joshua’s picture books on the bottom), though, Gordon’s mind didn’t work otherwise. Right now, they were sorted by how recently they’d been bought. The baking book he wanted was purchased about 7 years ago, he’d been on a trip with Amir.

Ah, there it was, sixth from the right. This one was desserts, the table of contents full of delectable options. Cookies wouldn’t make much sense, he couldn’t really roll the balls and Josh’s hands were usually too shaky for that. A cake would need icing- oh, a pie! That would be excellent. He could get some berries at the convenience store in walking distance, go with Josh and finally get out of the house again. Gordon sat down and drank his coffee until the sun peaked and the rooster crowed.

Joshua always woke up with the rooster. Today was no different; Gordon took the last sip of his drink right as he saw his son trudge out of his room. “Heya, bud.” He called out. The kid’s sleepy eyes lit up. “Hey, why don’t we put on some outside clothes and take a walk? Wanna help me make some pies later?” He figured it would be advantageous to make an extra pie for the two of them. Josh bounced on his heels and nodded excitedly.

Gordon helped his son pick out some clothes, just to be sure he didn’t wear his dirty clothes again, and went to get dressed. He undressed, put on some clean underwear and went in the bathroom. Ugh, he was still so… what was the word, battered? Black Mesa fucked him up bad. The last time he’d been nearly this bruised was college- or, no, it might have been the bar fight; that dude hit hard. At least the cuts were healing well, before bed he’d been applying some of the healing ointment someone at Black Mesa had been developing. While Gordon was, of course, wary to use anything related to that place, it worked well enough. 

He washed his face, put some foundation over the bruises (there were some useful things about makeup), and tied his hair in a low bun. It wasn’t the cleanest, but it would do. By the time Gordon was dressed, Josh was on the couch waiting for him to tie his shoes.Gordon cringed. “Ah, sorry Jo-bug, might have to wear the boots today.” Josh scrunched up his face and made the sign for  _ rain _ . “Right, bug, I know there’s no rain, but Daddy-” He looked down at his hand and the useless stump. “Daddy forgot how to tie your shoes, and he’s gonna take a little bit to figure it out again, okay?” Josh seemed satisfied with that answer and slipped on his green rainboots. Eh, at least they matched his shirt, something with a frog in the middle.

It only took ten or so minutes to get to the shop. Not a lot of cars passed them, but every time one did, Gordon tensed up. Any one of these could be full of soldiers, any one could be carrying a driver intent on killing everyone around them, and he wouldn’t be able to save Joshie, and- no. No, these were normal people. These were real people, who weren’t stuck in a demented science facility, who obeyed the law and the Geneva convention.

The shop was run by a family. Gordon knew them pretty well, he visited it often, and he, Amir, and Josh had even shared a meal with them years ago. Turns out they’d been worried during the week Gordon was gone; the teenager working the cash register told him they noticed something was wrong when the man hadn’t come in with his son and picked up their weekly pack of Moonpies.

“Okay, I do not get them weekly! At most it’s  _ bi _ -weekly.” The teenager snickered. “Anyway, they’re cheaper here than snacks anywhere else. I get deals here.” Just for good measure, Gordon added another pack to his things. 

He looked around. Josh was in the candy section, probably making the most important decision of his day over there. Gordon smiled, then he saw something, some _ one _ , behind Josh. Behind his son, they were about to get his  _ son _ , torture him and cut off his hand just like they’d done to Gordon, and he could not let that happen. Before he could think his actions through- shoot first, ask questions later- Gordon yelled out at Joshua to “MOVE!” and chucked the nearest object at-

At a woman in a sundress.

Fuck.

For once, Gordon thanked the genetic lottery that he had shit strength in his left hand. The woman hadn’t gotten hit, the only things hurt were the berries scattered across the floor and literally all of Gordon’s pride. Josh was mainly confused, he had no idea why his dad had screamed. For their part, the teenager at the counter wasn’t angry; in fact, they even laughed off the extra money Gordon tried to pay. Endless apologies later, the tiny family finally left with what they came for.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> We’ve gotten through two of Gordon’s tasks for the day, what else will happen? :eyes:  
> anyway writing this much makes my typing fingers ache and i was PLANNING on just doing most of his day in this chapter but noo, i finally got inspiration and i used it all on like 3 hours of a morning.   
> i based the shop on a couple family-owned shops in my town. there’s a produce place that always has the best stuff and some good mexican candies, and an asian market where the owner once made fun of my hair. they both always feel safe and i wanted to give gordo some more friends! fuck this lonely dad!


	6. phone go brrr

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon makes some calls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i gave up on having a fun theme-fitting title for this. the only reason i have this theme is because i thought it would be CUTE for the first chapter and im too stubborn for my own good. maybe ill think of one later.  
> I’ve realized I said that Black Mesa was in Nevada, and it’s not. I trusted Wayne. I will not be revising this mistake. Thank you.

Finally home, Gordon and Josh unloaded their shopping bags. After that ordeal, they finally had all the things they needed for the pie. So they gathered the ingredients and supplies and they got to work. Since it was improbable that Gordon would be able to do all the work, Joshua acted as his hands (apart from using the handheld mixer; Josh was still too little to hold it properly). 

Once all of the berry-goop was packed into the crust, Gordon cut some strips out of the remaining pie dough. He showed Joshua how to lattice it on top of the pies, the kid was usually better with patterns like that than he was. “I’ve gotta make a phone call, be back in a couple minutes!” The only indication that Josh heard what he said was a thumbs-up.

It didn’t take long for Gordon to find the prosthetist in his contacts. Right between “Pat basketball emoji” and “Sam heart emoji” was “Rachel Anders, MD.” Only G-Man was a dry enough person (?) to include the MD in the contact name.

The call went through after three rings. “Hello, is this Dr. Anders?” 

“Yes. Who is this? How did you get my personal number?” That was a good question, but not one that Gordon could answer.

“Uh, I- that’s hard to explain, I’m Gordon Freeman, and you were,” how does one explain a contact appearing in one’s phone? “recommended to me?”

A sigh. “You’re the one G fucked up, aren’t you.” This was much more of a statement than a question. “I was wondering when you’d get around to calling me. You need a fitting test. Why don’t we book you for… Sunday, 3 pm.” Gordon paused again, thinking. “It’s Thursday now, Freeman.” 

Ah, right, he knew that. “Sounds good. The, uh, cost?”

“G told me you were part of Black Mesa. That gives you a discount of 90 percent on the prosthetic.” Sick! “That comes to $501, plus the cost of the appraisal if $500, so that’ll come to $1001.” Less sick.

“Yeah, that sounds. Fine?” Probably. It wasn’t like Gordon knew how much prosthetics usually cost! Dr. Anders sighed again and read the address for her clinic, then hung up. Rude. 

Whatever. Gordon closed the call and looked at his contacts again. Wait, those weren’t normal. He found three more new contacts.

“Harold Coomer”

“bubby”

“Tommy!!!”

No mistaking who those were, at least. Right as he laughed to himself, the phone started ringing. Gordon almost dropped his phone in surprise, then answered without checking the contact. 

“This is Gordon, how can I help you?”

“Hello Mister Freeman!” Tommy’s voice was instantly recognizable, as well as extremely loud. “It’s Tommy!”

“Yeah, duh.” Despite his words, he was grinning. He hadn’t realized how nice it would be to hear from his friends, even just after a few days. “What’s up?”

Tommy took a more nervous tone. “Well, Mister Freeman, I wanted to invite you over! For no reason other than to see my good friend.” Wow. Gordon thought he’d known the most suspicious people ever before, but this was a new level.

“Tommy.” He chose his words carefully. “Are you sure that you don’t have any other reasons?”

“Nnnnnno?” The strain in Tommy’s voice was extremely obvious. 

MIT hadn’t let Gordon graduate completely gullible. But… he didn’t really have anything else going on.

“Can I bring Josh?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> even shorter than most of my chapters, but i figured anything's better than nothing!


	7. The Dog Barks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gordon has a normal visit with his friend Tommy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i’ve been excited about this one for AGES yall get ready   
> fun fact, apart from summaries/notes/tags, this story has gordon’s name 118 times. wack.   
> SORRY if you got a false alarm about this chapter. i realized it was a better idea to post it when more people were awake. im an attention seeker, what r u gonna do.

The Uber driver’s jaw dropped along with Gordon’s when they pulled up to the address Tommy had provided. It wasn’t what he expected, to say the least. At least an acre of a green lawn dotted with wildflowers was sprawled out in front of the gravel driveway they were parked on, and on the other side was a large house. In the yard several dogs were frolicking together; an open garage door seemed to allow them free passage inside and out. Gordon tipped the driver (what else would he do with all his new money?) and brought Joshua to the ornate door. He reached for the doorbell, but a little post-it note stopped him: “Dogs don’t like bell!” Instead, he snickered and knocked lightly.

Barking ensued. After a few moments, the door opened to a very casual looking Tommy. The lab coat and sneakers were ditched in favor of a t-shirt, sweat pants, and… sneakers. While one arm was full carrying a chihuahua, Tommy used the other hand to gesture Gordon and his son inside. He led them to a kitchen outfitted with shiny new appliances and put the chihuahua down into a dog bed, then greeted them properly.

“Hello Mister Freeman! And you must be Joshua!” Tommy beamed at Gordon, then crouched down to give Josh a little hand shake. Gordon smiled back, god, it was so nice to see him again. 

“Gordon is fine, man. We aren’t even coworkers anymore, I think, stop calling me that!”

━━━━━━━━━▼━━━━━━━━━

Now, Gordon tried his best to be a good only father. And, like most good fathers, he didn’t usually let his child be supervised by a dog. But he remembered how obedient this particular dog had been back in Black Mesa, so he allowed Josh to go outside to play with Sunkist, and Gordon only watched from the other side of a window.

On the inside of that window, the adults were talking and drinking some fruity cocktails made by Tommy. Once they’d been talking for several minutes, strictly not about Black Mesa, the conversation drifted to the insane mansion Tommy lived in.

“So. How’d you get the house.”   
  
“Well, Mister Gordon-” At least it was slightly more casual. “The money comes from my father. I use it to take care of the dogs, and- and sometimes people, when they need it!” Tommy’s expression darkened. “I try to use the money for good things, Mister Gordon, ‘cause I know that my father… he gets it from doing bad things, a lot of the time. I think, if I balance it out, maybe it makes up for what he’s done.”   
  
That ended up being more than Gordon could respond to. So, like any socially challenged individual would do, he pretended to pay more attention to his drink than the questions floating around in his mind. It wasn’t too hard, the drink was really good. Darnold had apparently been teaching him for the last few days and Tommy was a very quick learner. When asked, Tommy insisted that the cocktail part was just a hobby, unrelated to Darnold’s mixology career.

Nope, thinking about the drink just made it silent again. “Uh, yeah, doing good things makes sense.” He could tell more lurked behind Tommy’s words, possibly something about the numerous murders he’d committed, or his friend’s current lack of an arm, but he didn’t seem ready to share that yet. Time to change the subject!

“The other day, Josh drew-” Before he could launch into a rant about his son’s wonderful art, Gordon was interrupted by a noise coming from the kitchen. He assumed it was another dog, but then Tommy was tensed up. Something was wrong. His head whipped around, and he saw a suit. G-Man himself.

“Oh, I apologize for the disturbance. Hello, Doctor Freeman. It is a… pleasure to see you again.”

Gordon reached for his glass- maybe it could be used as a weapon- but Tommy’s outreached hand stopped him. “It’s okay, Mister Gordon. This is, uh, why I asked you to come here.” HA! So he was right, Tommy did have ulterior motives, he was right again- no, gloating could wait. After taking a glance at Josh, still outside and surrounded by dogs, he sat back down. G-Man sat directly across from him.

“Doctor Freeman. My deepest condolences for summoning you in such a ‘round-a-bout’ manner. My, proposition, could not wait.”

“What proposition?” Frankly, while Gordon was sick of people making him do stuff, this guy had just given him thousands of dollars. He’d hear him out.

“You see, there is an asset that we nearly lost following the, incident, in Black Mesa. Before that incident, this asset was contained inside the Black Mesa compound. This is no longer an option.”

He couldn’t be saying what Gordon thought he was.

“This asset has been shown to be too dangerous to remain in a scientific facility. However, you, Doctor Freeman, have proven that you can destroy it.”

He  _ couldn’t _ .

“You will be paid handsomely if you can, control this asset, perhaps even weld it to be used.”

_ Could  _ he?

“This entity, the one you call Benrey.”

Fuck.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sunkist is girl. trans rights dog.  
> i couldn’t fit it into the flow naturally but i had a cute scene written out! tommy offered josh a soda, gordon explained that he hates the fizziness, tommy begrudgingly gave him a lemonade instead. it was cute. tommy said effervescent.


End file.
